Green Wolfie

Nick Aster of triplepundit.com was one of our media panelists at the Sustainable Brands event in Monterey. Here is his interesting commentary on the green strategy of the New Belgium Brewery.

There was an incredible amount to learn from the Sustainable Brands conference in Monterey. I have picked the following six big lessons:

1. Brands which aspire to become sustainable need to communicate on a personal, not a political, level. Landor/Cohn & Wolfe’s own ‘Green Brands’ study showed that consumers on both sides of the Atlantic are much more concerned about personal environmental issues, such as waste and packaging, and they are being ‘turned off’ (to some extent) by abstract concepts like ‘global warming’. This is why supermarkets are making such a connection with people in both the UK and the USA. Abstract appeals to ’save the planet’ won’t work as well for brands as aspiring to make individual lives more ’sustainable’.

2. The environmental/sustainable message of brands must be combined with the more traditional consumer touch points, such as efficacy, price, etc. This was the starting point for Method, the home products company, which is growing incredibly fast from a zero base. There were many other examples of this important point.

3. Becoming a sustainable brand is also about better, long-term business performance. At a time of economic woes, a week of talking about sustainability might seem like a massive irrelevance. But we heard time and again that this big subject is just as much about profitable business as it is about the environment or social impacts. The people who created ‘Hip Investor’ believe they can outperform the market by investing in sustainable brands.

4. Any company can aim to create a sustainable brand. That was the view of green marketing guru Jacqueline Ottman, when I put the question to her. In Monterey, we heard from two companies, Dow Chemical and Clorox (best known for making bleach), who would not have been top of anyone’s ’sustainable brands’ list a few years ago. Yet both have embraced the sustainability agenda (in very different ways) which has earned them credit from customers, employees, shareholders and the media. Even coal companies, one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions, can become ’sustainable brands’ if they truly embrace the ‘clean coal’ agenda and invest in new technology.

5. Brands which aspire to be sustainable must ‘get their house in order’ before they even start planning any ‘green marketing’ initiatives. Measurement is critical. The best brands are performing ‘life cycle’ analysis - complex assessments which provide critical data on the social, environmental and economic impact of products through the supply chain, production process and after purchase. Life cycle analysis tells a brand just how far it needs to go before it can claim to be ’sustainable’. A good example of this is the work done by the New Belgium Brewery, Colorado, on some of their beers. This showed the company that, even though they prided themselves on making big progress in the production process (e.g. 100% renewable energy), life cycle analysis of the product after purchase showed they had a long way to go. But that’s OK! Sustainability is a journey, not an end point. Consumers don’t expect perfection when it comes to sustainability. But they do want to see that brands understand the scale of the problem, have a plan, and are in the process of implementing it.

6. There are now unprecedented opportunities for brands to get their sustainable messages across through both old and new media. This point came through loud and clear during the media session which I hosted, with Claire Alexander from Discovery Channel’s new Planet Green, Nick Aster of Triplepundit.com, Anya Kamenetz of Fast Company, and Betsy Rosenberg of Eco-Talk. After being a little slow off the market, traditional print and broadcast media are embracing the sustainability wholeheartedly. The launch of an entire network devoted to the subject is a significant moment. And online, Nick Aster was a great example of the passionate, innovative and interactive journalism which is springing up all over the digital media landscape.

To finish off, I have a clip from my interview with green marketing guru Jacqueline Ottman. Jacqueline has been in this business for more than twenty years, advising huge brands like HSBC. Her insights into sustainable brands in 2008 are well worth listening to.

Greg Owsley, Chief Branding Officer of New Belgium Brewery, spoke today at the Sustainable Brands 2008 conference in Monterey, CA on his company’s sustainable branding success story. New Belgium’s quest to showcase their sustainable practices began in hopes of inspiring other breweries or companies with similar values to embrace environmentally-conscious practices and culture from the inside out.

Naturally, the quirky, fun-loving company faced trials and tribulations in defining its sustainable image, including marketing efforts developed both internally and externally that showcased their core values but failed to tell their whole, quite impressive, sustainable story.

One challenge that often arises in this space, is ‘walking the talk’ - incorporating sustainable practices within the organization to coincide with marketing sustainable products or services to customers. Companies often jump ahead to the marketing part and forget that the proof truly is in the pudding, then come under attack for slacking in their own sustainable manufacturing or business practices. New Belgium faced such an experience when an ex-employee challenged its 100% wind power claim to local media by explaining that the company still utilized natural gas in its brewing process.

Greg’s advice to companies who face an experience such as this is to be completely transparent about whatever it might be they’re under fire for. He advises that acknowledging your slip-ups and working to correct them will ultimately put you in your customers’ good graces. Covering them up only makes for an inevitable uncovering and a deceitful reputation to follow.

This is a topic we face often in the PR industry, in crisis situations or more recently with clients building more of a presence on the blogosphere. We can all learn a lesson from New Belgium Brewery, which started with one man in a basement in Fort Collins, Colorado and has become one of the most recognized sustainable brands of our time.

If you’re battling how to walk the talk with your sustainable practice, or facing a communications crisis, just sit back, have a Fat Tire and be transparent. Your customers will understand and even value you for it.

Everyone at the Sustainable Brands conference in Monterey was talking about the speech given by Eric Ryan, Brand Architect of ‘Method‘, an eco-friendly home products company, which is growing very fast in the USA. Method is a good example of the amazing proliferation of US-based companies offering a vast array of new eco-products - everything from recyclable dry cleaning hangers to solar-powered mobile phone chargers. The home product range, in particular, appears to be undergoing a green revolution in the US, in a way which is not so apparent, I believe, in Europe. Here is Eric talking to me about Method’s mission of engaging consumers who have never used eco-products before - by focusing on good product design, safety, efficacy and fragrance as well as the environment. I’d call that a true ‘Blue Ocean‘ strategy.

How does a brewery become sustainable? The nature of the business places heavy demands on natural resources, so it’s one of the more difficult green challenges. In this video from the Sustainable Brands conference in Monterey, Greg Owsley of the New Belgium Brewery in Colorado talks about the company’s commitment to becoming more sustainable, and the insights gained from an environmental life cycle analysis of one of its beers, Fat Tire. Greg’s entertaining presentation at the conference was one of the most talked about events during the week. Another Green Wolfie will be posting her impressions of that a little later. You can read more about New Belgium’s sustainability initiatives here.

One of the most interesting ventures featured at the Sustainable Brands conference in Monterey was worldofgood.com, a new eBay community which allows consumers to buy products which have a positive social, environmental and economic impact around the world. This is a remarkable project which will connect third world producers with customers who want to make a difference when they shop. It’s a partnership between eBay and World of Good Inc, which was founded by Priya Haji. Here is Priya, with Robert Chatwani from eBay, talking about their partnership. We wish them every success.

Kindley Walsh Lawlor, Senior Director of Strategic Planning & Environmental Affairs at Gap Inc spoke at the Sustainable Brands conference in Monterey. There was much interest in Gap’s activities. Here is Kindley talking to me about the company’s ‘eco-strategies’.

The answer, according to one speaker at the Sustainable Brands conference in Monterey, is an investor who wants both a high return on capital and help the world become a better place - ethically, environmentally or socially. Paul Herman is the CEO of HIP Investor, a San Francisco-based company which advises both investors and companies on how to be more sustainable AND profitable. Here is Paul talking to me about the fact that the mainstream financial world on Wall Street and the City of London isn’t paying enough attention to the potential for highly profitable growth which also has a positive human, social and environmental impact.

What does Oscar the Grouch, the Sesame Street character who lived in a trash can, have to do with the California Environmental Protection Agency?

We discovered at the Sustainable Brands 2008 conference in Monterey that Oscar is helping the California EPA tackle the serious issue of pollution from old fluorescent light bulbs, which contain mercury.

California has created a highly innovative ‘Take-It-Back’ Partnership, fronted by Oscar, which is demonstrating the state’s firm commitment to environmental initiatives. For those in Europe who think we are doing so much more than the Americans on the environment, take a look at what California is doing.

At the conference, we heard from Leonard Robinson, chief deputy director for the EPA’s Department of Toxic Substances Control. In the video below he is talking to me about the ‘Take-It-Back partnership.

In the first of our video reports from the Sustainable Brands conference 2008, Claire Alexander of Discovery Channel’s new Planet Green Network, talks to be about what we can expect to see when the channel launches tomorrow, June 4th. Claire and I are sharing a panel tonight on the ‘Greening of Media’.